On the Windows 8 Start screen you will find a small tile named Camera. It is a shortcut to a little Windows 8 app that can be used to record videos or take pictures. Even though its interface is very simplistic, it is not that easy to understand how to set it up and use it to record videos or take pictures. That’s why I decided to write this tutorial and help you out.

Have you ever removed a Windows Phone app, only to wish you hadn't? You can navigate through the Windows Phone Store to find it again, or use a third-party reinstalling app, which will only take you to the app's page on the Store. Or, you can use WindowsPhone.com to reinstall any app that you've ever downloaded from the Store. It is easy and this tutorial will show you how it works.

We do want to test more and more Windows Phone devices here at 7 Tutorials. In order to evaluate their performance in a measurable and comparable way, we asked ourselves: which are the best apps for benchmarking Windows Phone devices? We did a bit of research and lots of testing and compiled this list with the best benchmark apps. Read on to learn which benchmarks are worth installing on your smartphone.

There are times when you need to free up some space on your system or you just want to learn how much space each installed application is using. If you are in need of such information, there are no obvious ways to find it. You might be tempted to search for programs that help with this task. You don’t need to do this though. Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer this information. It’s just a bit hidden and you need a bit of guidance to find it. We found three ways to learn how much space your installed applications are using.

Microsoft has taken great steps in improving startup times in Windows 8. While you’ll certainly notice the snappy get-up-and-go time in the beginning, you’ll still find that, over time, performance will degrade. The primary reason that a computer slows at startup is the lengthening of the list of startup applications and services. As you install more and more programs, they sneak themselves or their agents onto the startup list. Windows is forced to load more and more before it can take input from you. To help you keep things manageable, Microsoft has added in Windows 8 a new tab to the Task Manager. It enables you to monitor startup apps, their impact on the time it takes to load everything and keep them under control. Here’s how it works.

Depending on the smartphone you are using, creating custom ringtones for it might not be that easy. Unfortunately, on systems like Windows Phone or iOS, the process involved is a bit more complicated, as ringtones need to meet specific requirements in terms of format, length, etc. But what about creating ringtones, for free, for any smartphone platform? We did some research and we found a great application named Ringtone Maker. It is small, free, very easy to use and it is compatible with all major smartphone platforms, including Windows Phone. Let’s see how it works and how to create custom ringtones for just about any smartphone.

Taking screenshots in Windows Phone has been problematic, at least until the recent release of Windows Phone 8. Now this task can be done with ease, by pressing two buttons on your phone. To learn how it is done, read this quick tutorial.

On the 29th of January, 2013, Microsoft has launched the new Office. In the press, it was referred to as Office 2013 or Office 365, or both. Confusing it isn’t it? To help our readers, we decided that it would be best share some useful information about this product launch. We will share the differences between Office editions, the most interesting new features, the pricing and distribution methods used by Microsoft, where to buy the new Office and how much you will have to pay for it.

XPS files or XML Paper Specification files, are Microsoft's direct competitor to Adobe's PDF format. XPS Viewer is the tool used to view XPS files, similar to Adobe Reader. While XPS might not be as popular as PDF, it is used by some Windows users. For those of you who use it or would like to try it out, we decided to show what are the main qualities of the XPS format, how to create XPS files and how to work with the XPS Viewer, a tool available both in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

In a previous article we explained what the SmartScreen Filter is, how it works and why it is important to your security. However, if you decide that the SmartScreen Filter is rather annoying and you want to turn it off, here’s how this is done.

Windows Defender is an antimalware scanner that’s been baked into Windows since the days of Windows Vista. Users may know it and dismiss it as a lightweight spyware scanner that is helpful, but by no means comprehensive. That was true of the old Windows Defender; it could never be used as a sole means of protection from malware, but that is not true of the version included in Windows 8. That’s why we decided to make a more detailed comparison and show what’s different about the new version of Windows Defender when compared with the one included in Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

One of the things I do not like about the Start screen in Windows 8 is the fact that it doesn’t show the time and date, as the taskbar does on the Desktop. I wish Microsoft had provided an easy way to add a clock in a live tile. Luckily there are quite a few apps available to fill this gap. The better ones cost money but there are also some free alternatives to consider. In this roundup, I tested the latest free apps and tried to identify the best app for showing the time on the Start screen. Here’s what I found.